


Too Far Gone

by justheretoposttrash



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, But no one dies, Bylaude, Claudeleth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Friendship, Like it's somehow not completely explicit but still vivid?, Love, M/M, One Shot, Romance, Rough Sex, Sad Ending, Smut, Sort Of, abstract smut, one-night stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23585515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justheretoposttrash/pseuds/justheretoposttrash
Summary: The night before the Empire’s assault on Garreg Mach, Claude and Byleth allow themselves a moment of weakness.A moment...and that’s all it was.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	Too Far Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, time for something sad...for some reason…!? Idk why??! I’m upset, too??  
> I only went with “Sensei” instead of “Teach” for this one because of how it rolls off the tongue, no other reason.
> 
> CW: Lots enthusiastic but anxiety-ridden sex. Some shallow nods to the problematic teacher-student angle, but not in a particularly thought-provoking way. Just for angsty spice.

_No matter who or what you really are, I’ll always be on your side._

Turning in his bed, Byleth found that he couldn’t forget Claude’s words from earlier that day. He’d really meant what he’d said then, hadn’t he? Though Byleth had technically only known Claude for some months, it was starting to sink in that he could no longer imagine having never known him. 

The way that Lady Rhea’s eyes often looked through Byleth, like she wasn’t even seeing him—the way that Edelgard surveyed Byleth, looking at times conflicted, at other times detached—or how Dimitri looked at him in confusion, seemingly perturbed in one moment, apologetic the next, and unaware still the next...no one in Byleth’s life had ever said anything like what Claude had said to him. And he knew he still cared for them all, even as Edelgard turned her back on the monastery, even as Dimitri descended into darker and darker shadows, even as Lady Rhea lost sight of him as she focused on the monastery and Edelgard’s punishment. Everything was crashing together, coalescing in a wild and terrifying way. Images of the violence that tomorrow promised flashed through Byleth’s mind, as though he’d already traveled forward in time to those awful moments. The thought of something going wrong, of Claude being ripped away from Byleth’s life, of Byleth failing to protect him, whispered torturously throughout his body. 

He’d sat up in his bed then, running a hand down his jaw, when he heard a knock at the door.

“Hey, sensei. You awake?”

Byleth lit a candle by his bedside before opening the door. Claude stood in the dark in a half-buttoned undershirt, his chin and collarbone faintly outlined in gold from the residual candlelight in Byleth’s room.

“I figured that you couldn’t sleep either,” Claude said, offering one of his usual empty smiles, albeit a bit more weakly this time. Byleth knew his student well enough by now to tell that he, too, shared Byleth’s anxiety over tomorrow...though neither of them would show it outright.

“That’s not good. We need to be fully alert tomorrow,” Byleth said as he invited Claude in from the cold. “I’ll see if I have any sleeping serum left for us to use…”

“I know, I know,” Claude said with a stifled snort, his amiability returning as he listened to his professor fall back on his usual habits. “Always so pragmatic. Though...that’s not really what I’m worried about.” At that, he had Byleth’s full attention as he sat himself on the bed. The sight of him in the privacy of Byleth’s room, looking like he already felt at home, was...odd. “It’s not that I’m scared. I just...have this strange feeling. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I guess I...wanted to see you one more time before then,” he said more quietly.

He softly bit the tip of his index finger as Byleth sat next to him, looking lost in thought. His eyelids had fallen half-closed. His eyelashes were so pretty…

“We can go over more back-up plans and other hypotheticals,” Byleth suggested, but the words fell flat. For the first time, his speech had felt...disingenuous. He wasn’t sure what Claude was thinking right now, but he knew that both of them were holding something back. The thoughts that were haunting him, that were keeping him awake, pressed themselves to the tip of his tongue. Inhaling deeply, he made his decision—to let them out. “Claude...if we’re going to continue fighting side-by-side, you should know…”

Claude blinked, his green eyes fixing onto Byleth’s inquisitively. “Know what?”

“You said you’d always be on my side. And I...I want to tell you who I really am. What I really am. I just...don’t understand…” Byleth could barely keep his words straight. He wanted to make things easy to understand. He wanted to be honest. But his thoughts were so difficult to put into words, his memories and feelings so impossible to categorize...

“Hey, hey...it’s okay. Just...start at the beginning. It doesn’t have to make sense. Just tell me everything.”

With Claude by his side, he searched through the words that eluded him. Some things Claude already knew about in some capacity, and others were brand new. Byleth told him of the dreams and visions that followed him from when he was an infant, the small girl bearing the enormity of Sothis’s power that spoke to him, the emptiness of feeling her gone, the power of turning back time—how it felt to turn back time alone—and how often he’d seen the people he cared about die.

“This is crazy,” Claude muttered, his mind visibly racing below the surface of his calm eyes as he struggled to believe all of it. But then Byleth, nearly choking, made himself say it. That once, he’d seen _Claude_ die. And when Claude heard Byleth’s voice break, his skepticism and resistance fell under the concern he felt for his friend. His hand tightened comfortingly over Byleth’s on the bed. How long had their hands been touching?

“I’m not the impressive tactician that everyone thinks I am,” Byleth found himself saying. “I was just given second chances—too many. Everyone knows that I’m not qualified to be your professor. I’m not even qualified to keep you safe—”

“Sensei.” 

“Claude, I’m—I’m not real.” Though he had no concrete evidence, the events surrounding the Holy Tomb made him feel more and more sure of it...that he was just intended to be Sothis’s vessel. And if he _were_ his own person? If it weren’t for Sothis, he surely would have been an unremarkable man, without any of the talents that allowed him the privilege of even being here, of even being at Claude’s side.

“You feel plenty real to me,” Claude offered, interlacing his fingers with Byleth’s with a small smile. The remnants of his playfulness faded, however, as he watched Byleth attempt and fail to return his smile. “My friend...I had no idea.” His thumb traced the side of Byleth’s hand, back and forth. “After you’ve told me so much...could I tell you...what I’m thinking? What I’m planning? Can I…” Byleth had never heard Claude sound so unsure, and it made him listen all the more attentively, all the more gently. Claude’s cheeks burned a warmer color under the candlelight.

While Byleth gave bits and pieces of his own life to Claude, Claude painted an entire picture. He was much more eloquent, yet also more hesitant, as he shared the details of his split inheritance, his isolation, his dreams, and everything that he’d endured. He told Byleth that “Claude” wasn’t even his real name...and that, in spite of everything, it started to feel more and more like his name ever since they’d met.

He’d paused in the middle of it all. “Why am I telling you all this? I mean...I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you so badly. I guess I just thought that...I’d be telling you these things a lot later…” This was the first indication to Byleth that something may have been amiss, though the pressure of Claude’s hand over his own hadn’t left.

“You don’t have to…” Byleth started, but Claude kept on talking, as if he needed to, as if he couldn’t stop himself. During all the time they’d spent talking, the candle by the bed grew short, the melted wax starting to overflow the candlestick, the flame starting to sputter and flicker. 

“And it makes no difference to you, I can tell,” Claude remarked when he finished, chuckling in a hollow, nervous sort of way. “You still see me the same as before. I...I should’ve known that you would. I should’ve told you sooner…”

Any pretense of humor left him as Byleth’s fingertips brushed through the soft curls of hair on the side of his head. His mouth parted as he leaned into the touch.

“I, um…” Claude lightly bit his lip, looking down. “I want you to know me, sensei. I want you...to know every part of me…”

It wasn’t like Claude to be so...shy. So serious. But then, it wasn’t like Byleth to feel this feverish. The world was...upside down.

Perhaps it was because the pressure of tomorrow was looming over them terribly. Urgently. Perhaps the suddenness of knowing each other too well, too intimately, was overwhelming...

There was a strange sense of gravity in the room. The air was heavy, and it felt like something was pulling at Byleth’s body, just below his stomach—pulling him towards Claude, who was leaning closer, closing his eyes...

As they kissed, the candle’s flame consumed the end of its wick, and all the light in the room was extinguished.

Time extended from that moment in a surreal way as adrenaline shot through Byleth’s body. In the darkness, in the blur of their movements, he couldn’t remember who gave in first, who deepened the kiss first—he couldn’t remember if it were Claude’s hands tearing down his clothes, or if it were his own.

But he remembered finding the heat of Claude’s skin under his hands, the twisting and shuddering of Claude’s body against his palms, the strain in Claude’s voice—

“ _Ah_ —” 

Byleth could feel the agonizing way that the muscles throughout Claude’s body tensed against him, around him. Though Claude was clearly in pain, he gasped, “M-more…”

“I don’t...want to hurt—”

“Sensei—please—”

In a moment of paranoia, Byleth wondered if the two of them had been drugged somehow, though he knew that that wasn’t the case. But the way they pressed together—the way that this recklessness fit neither of them—it was all so new, it was all so confusing and frightening, and it was—it was—it was so _good_.

“Only for you—you’re the only one—fuck, more—fuck—please—only you—” Claude fell just short of begging—begging with his words as he uttered fragments of expletives and filth, fragments of some kind of confession of his affections, tangling and muddling these two feelings together until they were nearly incomprehensible—begging with his body as he curved his back, pushing himself closer, deeper.

“Se—sens...ei…!” he cried as Byleth pressed him against the wall, kissing the sweat from his shoulders, which shook up and down with every movement shared between them.

Byleth couldn’t tell if it were minutes or hours that were spent as their entangled bodies traveled the room in a sort of dance, or how long it was before he pushed Claude’s chest down onto his desk, papers rustling from its surface, an inkwell clattering to the floor, the wood of the desk creaking and groaning rhythmically under the force of Byleth’s passion, to the same rhythm of the sound of slapping skin.

“Sensei, sensei,” Claude breathed, almost forming a mantra that sent a strange fear through Byleth, a fear that fell dormant under the perceived need of his body.

They weren’t the kind of people to ever need anything, or anyone. And yet, for a reason they couldn’t yet grasp, they’d convinced themselves that they needed _this_ , that there was nothing else they could do but feel each other, pull each other closer—

As Byleth fell to a sitting position on the floor, his back leaning against the side of his bed, in the moment he was so sure that he needed the warmth of Claude mounting him, that he needed Claude in his lap, that he needed Claude to _take it,_ that he needed to feel Claude rising and falling on him to the sound of his pleasure.

“Ah…! Claude—”

“Sens—s—uhn—ah—”

Was it moonlight or the threat of the sunrise that illuminated them? As they struggled onto the bed, Claude pushed himself facedown, the side of his face visible as his mouth was being driven into the bedsheets, his eyes clenching shut, fists tightening before falling open limply, voice growing raw and faint through an ecstatic kind of exhaustion.

“Don’t—leave—stay—” A torn breath broke from Claude’s mouth. 

Byleth didn’t even know who finished first, or what caused any of it, as he felt the bliss of all the tension leaving him, that same tension wrenching and releasing through Claude’s body underneath. Byleth’s arms wound their way below the muscles of Claude’s stomach as he pressed flush against Claude’s back, not wanting to separate from his heat, not wanting to confront the aftermath of what had just happened.

Wasn’t it enough that he and Claude cared about each other? Wasn’t it enough that they trusted each other?

They lay in wordlessness and sweat, panting like their bodies had left them behind, like their breaths were still trying to catch up with them.

“Nn, sensei,” Claude sighed after a while, before bubbling into genuine laughter as he nuzzled the back of his neck against Byleth’s mouth. “Aren’t you going to let me go?”

Releasing him and watching how Claude winced when he tried to get up, Byleth gently lowered him back on the bed and cleaned him up himself. The first sounds of birdsong began to trickle under the door of the room.

“Shit, how long were we…?” Claude said, sitting himself up gingerly as he ran a hand through his hair. “Ah. I don’t even know. It happened so fast…” For a moment, it looked like the same confusion that Byleth felt was creeping up on him, too.

“Too fast,” Byleth said numbly.

“What? No, no, it’s...it’s fine. Right?” Claude leaned in, his eyelashes and green eyes so tantalizingly close. If Claude had been one hundred percent certain, if his insistence had been completely perfect, perhaps that would have been enough to soothe the despair that was starting to seep into Byleth’s bones. But his words and his eyes, for once being _too_ earnest, just barely fell short.

“You...never called me by my name,” Byleth said. It was the first time he had ever felt something like this, but he was pretty sure he knew what this was. 

This was guilt.

“I guess I...got attached to what I’ve been calling you already.” Claude rubbed the back of his neck, only a little sheepishly, before taking notice of how his friend could no longer look him in the eye. “Are you alright?”

“...I don’t know.”

If Claude still thought of him as his teacher in any capacity, then this was unforgivable. And what did Byleth think of Claude? Was he in love?

There were so many feelings that Byleth still couldn’t understand. He’d only gained the ability to cry a couple of months ago. And though he knew that Claude was the most important person in his life, he couldn’t express in words whether there was anything more than that.

Their friendship was so precious to him, that he couldn’t stand the thought of something coming in-between them now.

Byleth was never one to run from the truth, but the desire to do so just this once was so strong, so painful…

The truth was that...neither of them were ready.

“Hey...tell me what’s wrong,” Claude said as he placed a kiss to the side of Byleth’s neck.

Byleth had to suppress a shiver, his hand reaching across his body to grip his shoulder nervously. “There’s still so much we don’t know about ourselves. I barely understand what I’m feeling, and you—you have your whole future ahead of you.” 

“Whoa, there.” Claude backed his head away as he poked a finger into Byleth’s forehead. “Why are you speaking to me like you’re suddenly so much older and wiser, huh?”

Byleth shook his head, by this point unreachable. He tried to keep his voice from cracking as he gave a small smile. “I’m sorry, Claude. You were my very first friend. That’s why, when it’s the right time, I’m hoping you’ll find someone worthy of you.”

“What are you...” Claude began to say, his eyes widening as the realization caught up with him. He pressed his hands to Byleth’s face, a shadow of desperation entering his voice for perhaps the first time in his life. “Byleth—Byleth, don’t. I—”

Whatever he was about to say was lost as Byleth rewound the hands of time.

Suddenly, Byleth was all alone in his room again, his body cold and erased of sweat, sitting in the dark as he heard a knock at his door.

“Hey, sensei. You awake?”

Byleth didn’t answer this time. He raised a trembling hand to his lips as he tried to breathe away the memory of Claude’s kiss, Claude’s touch and taste and smell. No—it wasn’t a memory anymore, because it didn’t really happen. It didn’t really happen. Not anymore. 

Relief.

Grief.

Gone…

After several seconds of silence, he could hear Claude sigh from outside.

“My friend...aren’t we running out of time for secrets?” There was the faintest, lightest thud. Byleth imagined Claude’s forehead falling and resting on the door, his hand pressed against its panels. “I want you to let me in. Why won’t you…?”

They waited in stillness for minutes on end before Claude spoke again. “Hey, you know what? Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to bother you.” His voice had returned to its casual cheeriness, though Byleth knew better than to assume any of it was genuine. “It’d be pretty lame if we croaked, so let’s both survive tomorrow, okay? Because...I want to see you again.” With that, there were a few raps on the door frame—presumably from Claude bumping his fist on it as he left.

Claude couldn’t have known the empty, shattering feeling that filled Byleth’s lungs as he fell back onto his bed, burying his face in his hands. And Byleth couldn’t have known how, upon returning to his quarters, Claude’s hand reached against himself, lower, lower, as he lost himself in a murky impatience that he wasn’t yet concerned with understanding.

Neither of them could have known that the threads of time were already twined around them, drawing them together—that they’d be separated the very next day—that after all the heartbreak, the promise of their reunion in five years was already in play—that at the end of their long journey together, they’d have maturity where there was once carelessness, and courage where there was once fear.

One day, with no doubts, the two of them could call it “love”. But for now…until it, too, slipped away from them...

The only thing they had was tonight.


End file.
